It’s been almost four weeks since the 2024 presidential election, and many are still processing and discussing the results.
Colorado State University political science professors held a postelection debrief Wednesday, Nov. 20, in the Lory Student Center to address various topics in their areas of expertise, including analyzing Vice President Kamala Harris as a candidate, examining culture wars, discussing a racial realignment and talking about what’s going to happen with Congress, the United States Supreme Court and U.S. foreign policy.
President-elect Donald Trump won the election just 15 weeks after Harris entered the race. As a result of this short campaign, Harris became the first Democrat to lose the popular vote in a presidential election in 20 years.
But this wasn’t just a win for Trump. This election also propelled the pendulum swing toward Republicans in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate while the Supreme Court simultaneously had a conservative majority. This is considered a trifecta, and the national switch from one political party to another was somewhat to be expected.
“One of the main explanations modeled by scholars is that the public acts like a policy thermostat,” CSU political science Professor Kyle Saunders said. “When policy is out of step with the electorate, they signal for an adjustment, and they do so on important issues that they deem important at the time.”
Professor Ernesto Sagás of CSU’s ethnic studies department looked into what happened to Democratic voters and why Harris couldn’t get anywhere near President Joe Biden’s votes back in the 2020 election. He said many people in the Democratic electorate either didn’t vote or voted for Trump.
“Donald Trump campaigned very strongly on cultural issues. By most (political science) standards, he was a really bad campaigner.” -Ernesto Sagás, CSU ethnic studies professor
“Kamala Harris was perceived as being the woke candidate and the candidate that was out of touch, that everything was about wokeism, that everything was about the cultural wars,” Sagás said. “Actually, she campaigned very little on cultural issues.”
Sagás argued Trump campaigned more on cultural issues.
“Donald Trump campaigned very strongly on cultural issues,” Sagás said. “By most (political science) standards, he was a really bad campaigner.”
Sagás also said Trump would not stay consistent with his messaging but was still able to win. He argued this raised important questions about the quality of the candidacy or the issues that were presented by Harris and the Democratic party as a whole. Sagás said perceptions were more important than reality or the substance in politics and argued that presidential races are more of a popularity contest.
CSU political science Assistant Professor Anna Mikkelborg raised the question: “Are we witnessing a racial realignment where the Democratic party is no longer the party of racial minorities?”
Mikkelborg argued that although we are seeing demographic shifts between the two parties, we are far from seeing a true realignment that would favor the Republican party. She discussed what it would take for this realignment to happen.
“The first is a kind of shuffling — voter blocks moving from one party to another,” Mikkelborg said. “The second aspect of party alignment that’s necessary for us to call it is that the parties take different stances on policies as the results of the shuffling. Their ideological composition and policy priorities change.”
Mikkelborg added that because we’re not seeing shifts in racial attitudes or political ideologies within each party, it’s unlikely that a racial realignment with the Republican party would happen.
The results of this election and all the power concentrated within the Republican party begs the question of what will happen now.
CSU political science Associate Professor Matthew Hitt answered questions about what will happen in Congress and the Supreme Court and what the country will be looking at over the next two to four years.
“These are tight majorities — you cannot afford to lose too many seats,” Hitt said. “Very small numbers of votes in just a few congressional districts flipped the House of Representatives.”
Reach Jenna Landry at news@collegian.com or on social media @CSUCollegian.
